June 2012 Artist-in-Residence
Edible Estates #12: Budapest
Planting: 2–3 June 2012
Edible Estates #1–12: Exhibition
6 June–1 July 2012
Exhibition Opening: Tuesday 5 June 2012, 6–8pm
Artist’s talk on Domestic Integrity Fields starts at 6:30pm
Public Programmes
5–9 June in Budapest
26 June in Vienna (with MAK)
Blood Mountain
Vérhalom utca 27/c
Budapest 1025, Hungary
Free by appointment
Blood Mountain is pleased to announce its June 2012 artist-in-residence programme with American artist-designer-activist Fritz Haeg, who will produce the 12th chapter of his Edible Estates project series at Wekerle Estate, Budapest.
Edible Estate Regional Prototype Garden #12: Budapest, Hungary is a community project including a new garden in Pest and an associated exhibition and public programme at Blood Mountain’s headquarters in Buda.
Initiated in 2005 in Kansas, the geographic centre of America, Edible Estates work with selected urban families to create highly visible edible gardens between the private front door and the public street. In contrast to government-initiated allotment projects, Haeg’s gardens are situated on private property, cultivated by home-owners, and act as catalysts for future initiatives by the caretakers and the broader community. The artist-led project invites the arts community to engage with pressing contemporary urban and social issues.
The Budapest Edible Estate is located at Wekerle Estate: a former social housing and innovative garden programme of the early 20th century, which has since become a middle-class suburb of Budapest. The project aims to revive Wekerle’s original mission to support the health, social, and economic well-being of its residents. The participating family was selected by an open call. The planting is scheduled for Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 June, where volunteers are welcome.
As part of Blood Mountain’s earlier exhibition and public programme produced from the Budapest Design Week, Stories from Central Europe, Haeg presented the Edible Estates series and visited Central Europe for the first time in October 2011.
The project will be shown at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale (29 August–25 November 2012) in the American pavilion’s exhibition, Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good (curated by Urban Institute for Urban Interventions).
The next Edible Estate will be developed in 2013 in the artist’s hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota (commissioned by the Walker Arts Center and coinciding with Haeg’s first retrospective at the institute), which will also act as the backdrop to Blood Mountain’s ongoing documentary about the project, produced with Film56 (Budapest/San Francisco).
Edible Estates #12 is developed in association with Wekerle Garden Circle/Wekerle Transition, the in-kind support of Green Fortune Hungary, 56Films and Artemisia Landscape Design, and the invaluable help of many volunteers.
The project is produced with generous support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
During the residency, Blood Mountain presents an exhibition of the 11 existing Edible Estates and becomes the setting for an ongoing Domestic Integrity Fields workshop.
Public programme
Produced in association with the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna
Domestic Integrity Fields Workshop (Budapest)
Wednesday 6–Friday 8 June 2012, 10–6pm. Free.
Blood Mountain (Vérhalom utca 27/c, Budapest 1025, Hungary)
Volunteers and donations of used clothes are welcome.
A continuation of Edible Estates (est. 2005) and Animal Estates (est. 2008), Haeg’s associated project exploring urban wildlife architecture, Domestic Integrity Fields (est. 2012) examines patterns and rituals of interior domestic landscapes created by humans from the surrounding land and city. The project is inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Pattern Integrity,’ his theory of explaining the separation between animated things and their materiality. As an early chapter of the project, the event comprises a crochet workshop, incorporating the materials collected during the making of Budapest Edible Estates (twigs, seeds and old rags) and informal discussions.
Education workshops (Budapest)
Saturdays 9 and 23 June, 11–1pm
Blood Mountain (Vérhalom utca 27/c, Budapest 1025, Hungary)
Suitable for 6 to 12 year-olds.
Part of Blood Mountain’s education programme, Session One (9 June) provides younger audiences with the opportunity to develop a kitchen herb garden on Blood Mountain’s premises. Session Two (23 June) is a workshop in compost making and baking, using produce from the Herb Garden.
Produced under the supervision of Blood Mountain’s art educator and in association with Green Fortune Hungary.
MAK NITE Lab (Vienna)
Tuesday 26 June 2012, 7–10pm. Free.
MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art Columned Main Hall (Stubenring 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria)
7– 8pm: Lecture at MAK Columned Main Hall
8–10pm: Public event in MAK garden
Blood Mountain is invited to guest-curate the next MAK NITE LAB event, focussing on Haeg’s Edible Estates and its latest inception in Budapest. The evening starts with a lecture by Haeg and continues with an evening of activities, presenting the outcome of the Domestic Integrity Field workshop and the work of the project’s varied collaborators.
Notes
Fritz Haeg is an American artist and prominent urban gardener. He studied architecture at the I.U.A.V. (School of Architecture in Venice, Italy) and Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburg, USA). He is a 2010/11 Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, a regular lecturer at American Universities (Princeton, Parsons, Cal Arts, University of Southern California), and contributor to periodicals (Artforum and Frieze). His work has been exhibited at leading art institutions (Tate Modern, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, SALT Beyolu, San Francisco MoMA, Wattis Institute, MIT, and many others). His projects range from urban gardens and wildlife habitat (Edible Estates, Animal Estates, Gardenlab), to social gatherings and educational environments (Sundown Salon and Sundown Schoolhouse) and design projects (Fritz Haeg Studio). Edible Estates exists in seven American locations (Salina, Kansas; Lakewood, California; Maplewood, New Jersey; Austin, Texas; Baltimore, Maryland; Descano Gardens, California; New York City; Ridgefield, Connecticut) and internationally in London (commissioned by Tate Modern, 2007), Rome (while in residence at the American Academy in Rome, 2010), and Istanbul (at SALT Beyoglu, 2011). After Budapest, the 13th Edible Estate is scheduled for 2013 in Minnesota, Minneapolis (commissioned by the Walker Arts Center). Between his travel, work, and public engagements, Fritz’s home since 2000 is a part-subterranean, part-geodesic dome in the hills of Los Angeles. www.fritzhaeg.com
Blood Mountain Foundation is an independent non-profit organisation working at the crossroads of contemporary art, architecture, and design. Based in Budapest, our mission is to generate fresh discourse and to encourage the production of new work through curatorial and educational programmes, publications, artists-in-residence, and new cross-disciplinary projects. Central to our objective is the belief that culture is an agent for social change and its open discourse and unrestricted practice are fundamental to the life of a participatory democracy. Our previous artists-in-residence include Diango Hernández (CU), Asim Memishi (AUS), The Otolith Group (Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, UK). Blood Mountain was founded in 2010 by Hungarian-born curator, Jade Niklai and Australian industrial designer, Tom Sloan. www.bloodmountain.org
Wekerle Estate was constructed in Budapest’s 19th district in 1908–1950 to provide improved living conditions for rural farmers seeking work in the city. It is a utopian planned community inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City. Each council flat was accompanied by a small plot of land and four fruit trees, which by the end of the first harvest produced on average sufficient produce to generate four-times the annual rent of one household. Local community organisers, Wekerle Garden Circle and Wekerle Transition strive to address Wekerle’s founding principles and in promoting the importance of sustainable urban gardening. atalakulowekerle.blogspot.com
MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna is one of Europe’s leading art institutions. In 1994 it founded the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, which was the first art institution to present Haeg’s Edible Estates project in 2005. The MAK NITE series in Vienna is a recognised platform for applied experimentation by contemporary artists, architects, designers, and performance and media artists. Started a decade ago, its current programme, which is a free monthly event, explores the theme of change in collaboration with leading local and international cross-disciplinary practitioners in preparation for the institution’s 2014 European Triennial for Change. www.MAK.at
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts is one of America’s leading philanthropic bodies. Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation makes project-based grants to individuals and organisations and produces public programmes to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.
www.grahamfoundation.org
Green Fortune is an urban landscape design practice, specialising in internal vertical garden design. The Hungarian office of Green Fortune is developing an organic seed bank focused on traditional endangered seeds, which alongside expert local knowledge, is generously made available to the makers of the Budapest Edible Estate. www.greenfortune.com
56Films is a production company specialising in documentary film-making and television production. With a belief that stories inspired by real-life are as equally enthralling and authentic as fiction, 56Films tells compelling stories with a personal point of view. It was co-founded in 2005 by journalist-documentary filmmaker Réka Pigniczky, who is a former correspondent for Associated Press (New York and Budapest) and a founding trustee of Blood Mountain. The documentary about Fritz Haeg and the Edible Estates project will be the company’s third feature length film. www.56films.com
Artemisia Landscape Design is one of Budapest’s most innovative design firms, focusing on building community through creating ecologically friendly green spaces in homes, schools, and public spaces. Artemisia provided invaluable support to the earlier stages of the project. www.artemisiadesign.com
Enquiries
For high resolution images, interviews and other requests:
info@bloodmountain.org / T +36 30 415 2123
*Image above:
The Szente-Lénárd Family, caretakers of Edible Estates #12. Photo © András Káré, 2012.
